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Thursday, 28 June 2012

Sephora Australia: an update

Back in February I posted the rumour that Sephora was opening a store in either Sydney or Melbourne later this year. This post received a lot of comments from people, piping in with what they have heard. At this stage it is still looking more rumour than truth but I thought that I'd lay all the evidence out before you and let you draw your own conclusions!

Evidence supporting the rumour that Sephora is coming to Australia

After I published my original post, a leading makeup artists contacted me to say that a student in one of her classes, who also works for a large commercial real estate agent, told her that reps from LVMH were searching for spaces for Sephora. Of all the rumours this one sounds the most promising!

I heard the rumour from staff at the Waikiki store, as did Ivy. Kimmi (from The Plastic Diaries)heard it from the Las Vegas store and Sandra heard the same thing from the Rome store. As promising as this sounds, Kimmi first heard the rumour in 2010 and was told a store would open in 2011 and that hasn't happened.

When Brooke was googling to find more information out about the rumour she found a Trade Mark filing for Sephora Australia filed in Nov 2011. Now I can't say I understand anything that is written on that page but hopefully it is the initial steps Sephora need to take to open a store here! Maybe Kimmi's source was right but instead of the store opening in 2011 they would be commencing the process?? Hope so!

Annie93 gets emails from Westfield Southland and in one of them there was a survey asking which stores you would like to see there and one of the stores listed was Sephora!

Sylivia says that there is a store opening in Bondi Junction, though I have googled and haven't been able to find out any mor on this.

LatherRinseRpt has just added this little beauty to the rumour mill: I heard from someone involved with Westfield that Sephora is scoping the higher
floors of Pitt St Mall's

This article from SMH says that they are coming soon - surely that is some serious evidence!!

Evidence against the rumour that Sephora is coming to Australia

When Kimmi first heard the rumour she rang every single persn in the United States (or close to it!) to get confirmation and was unable to. Plus she heard the rumour 2 years ago and still nothing has happened.

I emailed Sephora to see if they could confirm or deny it and this as the response I got:

Dear Sarah,

Thank you for contacting Sephora.com. We appreciate your interest in our company and are pleased to hear that you would like a store near you.

At this time there are no plans for a store opening in Australia. However we are excited to let you know that there are Sephora retail stores opening all over the world.

To view the latest store openings and locations nearest you, please refer to the Store Openings section on the Store Locator at Sephora.com.

If we can assist you further please contact us again by replying to this email or via phone at 1-877-SEPHORA (1-877-737-4672.)

Regards,
Now I like to think that it could still be possible and that they are just not releasing it to a tiny little blogger in Australia and are saving the exclusive for one of our major publications. Am I being naively optimistic?? Perhaps, but life is definitely more fun believing all the cool rumours!